I never watched The Martian Chronicles. I'll do so. I remember The Day After freaking me out. I'll have to revisit. I also remember Testament scaring the shit out of me. An image of a kid bleeding out of his ass in the bathroom sink and his mom freaking out is burned into my psyche. That was '83. I was 8 years old. Funny to think that the threat isn't much reduced, but we aren't bothering to scare the fuck out of our children about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testament_(1983_film) That's must see TV right there.
Goddamn that looks fucking grim. I hadn't heard of it before now. I can sorta shrug off The Day After. When the Wind Blows is harder. The horrific low water mark, however, is Threads. As an armchair expert in nuclear warfare, I can say with confidence that the threat is much reduced. Arsenals are shadows of their former selves. Development has ceased (regardless of what they tell you). The strategic options available to world powers are greatly magnified and any potential conflict is no longer bilateral, which drastically reduces the necessity of retaliatory annihilation. What's funny is that even back at the height of the Cold War the Soviets figured they didn't actually have the retaliatory power to take on the US with nukes; they were much heavier into biological warfare (and probably still are). And the nuclear responses of all sides are still very human-dependent; every failsafe-type situation faced during the Cold War de-escalated without a single shot being fired. Talk to me when the Russians are shooting down airliners with congressmen on them again.